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Actually, watch the whole thing. The title is very misleading. retd: ACM Tipis is quite categorical that he is not supporting the accused retd ACM Tyagi. What he was questioning was the need for arrest? Also, my view was the real issue was his view that this act has grave impact on the IAF as an institution and should be done very very carefully. Overall got the impression of an ex chief very concerned on the turn of events but did not know all the facts of the case. Just a concerned ex chief. The title is misleading, I will send a message to Vishnu.

Air Marshal Dhanoa is a qualified flying instructor and has flown various types of fighter aircraft in his successful career.During the Operation Vijay in 1999 (Kargil Operations), he famously commanded a fighter squadron and himself flew numerous night strike missions in the mountainous terrain.

I wonder if India did a mistake option for Jaguar over Super Etendard in early 80 , The Jaguar had issues of Engine derating and were no good other than low level strike role but Super Etendard was jack of all trades with better upgrade potential for its airframe

Paul wrote:Jaguar was a mistake all right. But the alternative should have been the Mirage F1.

Oh it was competing with Mirage F1 iirc and not Super Etendard , I would think Mirage F1 was still a better choice over Jaguar ,multirole in nature but those days the AF were focussed with specialised aircraft and IAF was very PAF specific and so was Jaguar buy

The Jag induction is very well detailed by Gp. Capt. Bhargava. IAF wanted a deep strike aircraft with two engines. They went with the competition in the name. The only airplane for which the IAF waited for was Marut. In all, IAF waited for 7 years from their first showing interest in Jags to starting the process of acquiring them. Meanwhile, HAL tried in vain to get alternate engines for the Marut. Marut would have done exceptionally well with Jag's engines, but Britain would not allow such a sale. IAF/India buckled. The last sentence is my opinion, the rest are facts.

India is supplementing its strategy of reactivating old landing strips near the border with China. It is now going to position its US made special ops aircraft within a short flying distance from these strips.

New Delhi (Sputnik) — India has decided to position its six C-130J in Panagarh in West Bengal to improve the mobility of armed forces on the border with China. The location is some distance away from the border but within easy reach of the planes earmarked for special operations and rapid troop redeployment.

“The second squadron of C-130J would be located at Panagarh. The flying will start by March-April 2017,” Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha said ahead of his retirement on December 31. Currently, the Indian Air Force (IAF) operates a fleet of five C-130J-30s and will receive an additional six C-130J-30s in year 2017. The IAF uses its C-130Js to support a variety of missions, from logistics support to providing vital humanitarian aid.

Panagarh will evolve into a significant logistic base as the Indian Army’s 17 Mountain Corps is to be located here. More than 90,000 armed personnel will constitute the 17 Mountain Corps which is being raised for deployment along the 2,521 mile long Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China. However, the lack of financial support for raising a corps has delayed the scheduled deployment. “Lack of financial support is creating hurdles for us. We are using our own reserves to raise the formations as of now. But physically on ground, we are on track,” say senior officials of the force. The Indian Army needs approximately $14 billion for the raising of the Mountain Strike Corps in the next four years. The IAF may also relocate its refueling tankers at Panagarh. The US Air Force had constructed the Panagarh airfield in 1944 during the Second World War as a part of China Burma India Campaign.

^^^Indranil - to the above, I would like to add that HAL did not work with GTRE to address the area ruling in Marut Mk1R with reheat engines developed by GTRE. Again, as per Gp Captain Bhargava, that version of Marut held the best potential and was a very good machine. While inspite of area rule being vitiated due to new engine, it had very good performance in reheat segment, Marut Mk1R had lower performance in dry thrust mode due to area ruling problem. This part HAL never rectified.

BTW - those lucky enough to see Jaguars flying low really appreciate what 'low level' flying means in context of Jaguar. While I've even seen Mig-21s go real low, nothing beats the Jaguar. With father posted in one of those big cantonments in northern part of Punjab, during exercise season, we used to go to roof-top to catch glimpse of fighters flying in the area. And if you were lucky, you could see a Jaguar 50-100 feet above the roof-top of your typical 2-storey army officer accommodation. And if you were really really lucky, one would pass over your roof top or very close and you could even make out the outline of the pilot in the cock-pit for that split second. We used to see them come from certain directions and used to scan the sky for any sign.

rohitvats wrote:^^^Indranil - to the above, I would like to add that HAL did not work with GTRE to address the area ruling in Marut Mk1R with reheat engines developed by GTRE. Again, as per Gp Captain Bhargava, that version of Marut held the best potential and was a very good machine. While inspite of area rule being vitiated due to new engine, it had very good performance in reheat segment, Marut Mk1R had lower performance in dry thrust mode due to area ruling problem. This part HAL never rectified.

Handling area rule is now a 100 year old tech. Many planes have had that problem and were modified suitably. Dr. Whitcomb is famous to have applied it by eyeballing the wind tunnel models and using sandpaper to achieve better ruling. At the point when the decision was being taken in favour of Jags instead of continuing the development of the Marut, there were known solutions of handling fat engines. For example, Saab elongated the Viggen, Convair added fairings. Could Marut have been refined to meet our requirements? I believe the exceptional test pilots of those times. If you like the Jag's low level flying, you would have appreciated the Marut even more. None of the pilots who have flown both planes mince words in describing the same.

The truth of why the Marut failed is probably a cocktail of reasons:HAL did shoddy PSU work. The camp within IAF who were enamoured with imported airplanes spared no stone in exposing them. The economics of our country made it much easier to just go for ready made imports rather than labour through and pay for ab-initio developments. The political class of independence struggle had perished and left behind a crop that had sunk the country into deep internal political struggle. Who had the time to put IAF/HAL/GTRE together. The job was left to a handful of test pilots who enjoyed enormous respect in IAF circles. Opposing them were the lot who did not and still cannot believe that SDREs of HAL/GTRE cannot handle area ruling Additionally, India was a second class citizen in the world of geopolitics. The Indo-Pak wars were recent and PAF was getting a steady stream of aircrafts from USA. It was easy to be short sighted then and get the Jaguars, which by the way was in need of a lot of final touches too. Only thing was that the engines and airframe sat well together.

In hindsight, although it hurts a lot, it is understandable. It is literally a mistake and lesson of national proportion. I only hoped that such a mistake would not be reiterated today. Thankfully, we have the strength to forge forward this time. We have a strong govt. We have the economics and the front seat at the geo-political table to back us. We have an inductable plane whose manufacturing needs to be streamlined, whose design needs to be refined. Our designers and builders to be honed in a time when we have no impending war. Once again, we have small group of test pilots which swears by the LCAs. Unfortunately, once again we have a bigger group who think that we should have second line of "Gripen-like", F-16-like aircraft. Basically, that TFTA goras can teach a bunch of SDREs how to screw together aircrafts. But SDREs cannot teach other SDREs how to do so. Once again, this bigger import-pasand group is winning. It hurts a lot more this time. It is very difficult to keep looking the other way!

rohitvats wrote:BTW - those lucky enough to see Jaguars flying low really appreciate what 'low level' flying means in context of Jaguar. While I've even seen Mig-21s go real low, nothing beats the Jaguar. With father posted in one of those big cantonments in northern part of Punjab, during exercise season, we used to go to roof-top to catch glimpse of fighters flying in the area. And if you were lucky, you could see a Jaguar 50-100 feet above the roof-top of your typical 2-storey army officer accommodation. And if you were really really lucky, one would pass over your roof top or very close and you could even make out the outline of the pilot in the cock-pit for that split second. We used to see them come from certain directions and used to scan the sky for any sign.

I was near Vimanagar in June 2006 (a few days before Dr Kalam was set to fly in a Rambha from No 20 Sqn). All of a sudden I saw a pair of Rambhas REALLY, REALLY low. Like rohit said, for a brief second I could see the outline of the pilot. The irony was the people who live in the area were nonchalantly just walking about their business. I was the only mad man who was screaming.....Su-30, Su-30, Su-30!!!!